It has been known to provide artist's laminated supports upon which an artist may produce a painting or work of art. A problem encountered with prior art workpieces or supports is that of relatively short longevity. Changes in relative humidity often cause supports to buckle and warp over time. Use of poor quality materials such as laminated cardboard or processed wood fiber supports leads to premature degradation. There is a present need for an artist's support that is durable, of a high quality and relatively strong.
Artist's supports or working surfaces have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,344,997 (Paquette) and 4,720,406 (Dixon). In Paquette the support disclosed has a rigid backing of a curved piece of masonite or wood. The support has a concave surface with sides that flare out from the base portion. A canvas surface is secured directly to the backing by appropriate adhesives. Paquette's worksheet or support has a non-planar contour which allows the artist to produce paintings, portions of which have a different spatial relation. This patent does not improve on the more widely used planar solid supports as described earlier in this invention, nor does it address the most important aspect of any artist's support, physical stability. Instead, it addresses the more specialized situation of attempting to aid the artist in creating a sense of depth by physically providing depth or texture in the support.
Dixon, U.S. Pat. No. 4,720,406 discloses a canvas for use by an artist including a flexible substrate material having a surface coating of an animal glue. The substrate is an open weave nylon having a specific denier range. The substrate is then mounted on a stretching framework backed by butcher's paper. The canvas of Dixon is prepared by coating a sheet of the substrate with a binding material, drying the resulting sheet and glazing the material with a glazing compound that dries to a translucent layer. The resulting sheet is then dried and is ready for use. In Dixon an open weave canvas comprised of either nylon, polyester or silk is coated with rabbit skin glue and "refined animal glue which forms a translucent glaze as the painting surface". Although the suggestion of nylon or polyester fabrics as supports for artwork may show an improved durability over high quality linen fabric, rigidity may be the same or less. This is because the canvas preparatory coating and/or sizing layers have a strong influence on the overall stiffness of the support. Since the inventor claims that the binding material is flexible, the substrate will not provide a given paint layer with sufficient support over time, even after tensioning on a standard artist's wooden stretcher. Furthermore, the use of hide glue in sufficient quantities to saturate a fabric support as described in the patent, will surely produce large dimensional changes of the support as the ambient relative humidity changes. These large dimensional changes will impose equally large stresses on any paint layer which will inevitably lead to premature failure of the paint.
In all of the known prior art there is not disclosed an artist's support that satisfactorily minimizes warping and distortion of the finished support over a period of time, nor that utilizes high quality and durable materials for increased longevity.